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Parents with babies in the neonatal intensive care unit who were given two training sessions with a nurse and a brochure on recognizing and relieving premature babies' pain reported higher satisfaction with the pain information provided to them and said they would want to have a bigger role in comforting their babies compared with those who didn't have the training, a study conducted in the U.K. found. However, both groups expressed the same satisfaction levels with the pain care given to their children and both reported high levels of stress during their babies' hospital stays.

Related Summaries

NICU nurses not only give the best possible care to their tiny patients but also attempt to understand what the parents of premature or ill babies are experiencing.
"There is no other unit that you're ever going to work in that you're going to get the same connection with not only the patient but the family," said Erin Bemis, a NICU nurse in El Paso, Tex. "There's no greater satisfaction than when you get to see that baby go home."

Electronic tracking of nurses' steps at a Florida hospital has reaped many rewards. Volunteer participants have provided data to increase workflow efficiencies, improve hourly rounding, raise patient satisfaction scores, and evaluate night staffing ratios, shift duration and start/end times. This pilot program at Celebration Health has shown results with much to celebrate for both nursing staff and patients.

Premature babies whose parents visited and held them frequently during their NICU stays were calmer and had higher quality movement than their less-visited peers, according to a new study in the Journal of Perinatology. Researchers tracked the frequency and length of parental visits and cuddling sessions during the hospital stays of 81 babies born at 30 or fewer weeks. At term, the researchers assessed the babies' neurobehavior using standardized techniques. While some infants were visited almost every day, more than two thirds were visited five or fewer days per week, and the rate of visits decreased over time. Holding frequencies, however, increased during the stays. More visitation and holding were associated with better quality of movement, less arousal and less excitability for the infant, with increased cuddling also associated with less stress. The authors conclude that visitation and holding may be easy-to-implement interventions that can promote healthy parent-child attachment while also giving preterm infants a developmental advantage. Read the abstract.

Parents with babies in the neonatal intensive care unit who were given two training sessions with a nurse and a brochure on recognizing and relieving their child's pain reported higher satisfaction with the pain information provided to them and said they would want to have a bigger role in comforting their babies compared with those who didn't have the training, a study conducted in the U.K. found. However, both groups expressed the same satisfaction level with the pain care given to their children as well as felt very stressed during the babies' hospital stay.

Parents with babies in the neonatal intensive care unit who were given two training sessions with a nurse and a brochure on recognizing and relieving their child's pain reported higher satisfaction with the pain information provided to them and said they would want to have a bigger role in comforting their babies compared with those who didn't have the training, a study conducted in the U.K. found. However, both groups expressed the same satisfaction level with the pain care given to their children as well as felt very stressed during the babies' hospital stay.